Lecture 7 - Latour

Question 1

Laboratory life:

Answer 1

• Ethnographic/anthropological study of scientific lab
• Concerns the construction of scientific facts: fact as a product of a practical operation through which a statement can be transformed into an object or a fact into an artefact
• Laboratory as a factory
• Highlights importance of material elements of laboratory in production of facts
• Founding document of STS

Question 2

We have never been modern:

Answer 2

• Since enlightenment: subject/object divide
• Paradox of modernity: wild proliferation of hybrids
• Ambition to overcome the radical divide of subject and object that governs modern philosophy
• Reality can not be adequately understood if humans and non-humans are treated asymmetrically
• Humans and non-humans are connected in networks of relations
• Conclusion: parliament of things

Question 3

Matters of fact / matters of concern:

Answer 3

• Matter of fact: disposition, allowed critics to trace difference between modern and premodern
• Matter of fact is neutral state
• Objects as things that matter to us (matter of concern), might not be inherent but that is wrong way to think about this

Question 4

Mistake of critical theory – oscillation between two positions:

Answer 4

• Fairy position: projecting wishes upon false object
• Fact position: critique of persons who are seduced by fairy objects, you are acted on by forces unconscious to you
• You can always switch between these two, therefore you are always right

Question 5

New critical realist attitude:

Answer 5

• Multifarious inquiry launched with tools to detect how many participants are gathered in a thing to make it exist and to maintain its existence
• = second empiricism = getting closer to the facts
• Objects are between fact and fairy

Question 6

Down to earth

Answer 6

Reinterpreting the critical task:
* Not[1] globe, or global, nor [2] local
* Also not: [3] ‘out of this world’
* The terrestrial is oriented toward [4]
the Critical Zone(s)